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Lowry’s silent act on Raptors might speak volumes

It was easy to skewer Raptors guard Kyle Lowry for his laughable tete-a-tete with reporters at USA Basketball’s mini-camp in Las Vegas on Friday.

In his first media session since the franchise-changing trade that sent DeMar DeRozan to San Antonio for Kawhi Leonard, Lowry refused to discuss anything to do with the deal. So if you asked Lowry a question about the U.S. national team — which, speaking of hot topics, won’t play a meaningful game until next summer’s World Cup of Basketball in China — he was all too happy to opine. But if you asked him about the Raptors, he acted as though was only tangentially familiar with the existence of the club.

Ex-Raptor DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry reconnected at the USA Basketball camp in Vegas this past week, but Lowry dodged questions about the departure of the player he called his best friend. (Ethan Miller / GETTY IMAGES)

“Which franchise?” he said, coyly, when it was pointed out to him that he’s presumably a leader of the one based in Toronto. So much for the idea that Lowry might indulge his team’s fan base with a sentence or two about how he felt about seeing DeRozan, whom he called his “best friend,” packing up and leaving town. The Raptors will pay Lowry $31 million (U.S.) to play basketball next season, apparently not enough to buy two off-season minutes of something other than the point guard’s stock immaturity. At least, that was one way of looking at his behaviour.

Certainly there are others. While some observers have interpreted Lowry’s silence as an indication of his discontent with DeRozan’s exit, that seems a stretch. And even if it’s not, Raptors head coach Nick Nurse, who observed Friday’s USA Basketball practice from the sideline, didn’t seem particularly concerned about Lowry’s current mood, whatever it is, having an effect on the coming season.

“When the ball goes up, he’ll play to win,” Nurse said. “It’s all he’s ever done, and I don’t see that changing.”

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To that end, more than a week since the trade was announced, let’s not over-romanticize the DeRozan-Lowry relationship. Sure, they’re friends. But it’s important not to forget that they’ve butted heads professionally. A little more than a year ago, after the Raptors were ousted by the Cavaliers in the 2017 playoffs, the duo’s connection was as frayed as it’s ever been. DeRozan expressed displeasure that Lowry sat out the final two games of the sweep, essentially calling into question the severity of the point guard’s ankle injury. Lowry apparently didn’t appreciate the insinuation. There were suggestions within the organization that something wasn’t right in the locker room. Whatever the various problems, peace talks were arranged. Then-coach Dwane Casey presided over a Bay Area meeting around the NBA final that brought together DeRozan and Lowry for an airing of grievances, an important step on the road to Lowry signing a three-year extension worth about $100 million.

The internal finger-pointing hardly stopped there. Sources say in the wake of this year’s sweep by the Cavaliers Lowry added his voice to an organizational chorus critical of DeRozan’s defensive ineptitude, the worst of which saw him benched for the fourth quarter of Game 3.

Seen with all that in mind, you could make a case this off-season has played out in Lowry’s favour. The arrival of Leonard, a two-time defensive player of the year, and fellow trade piece Danny Green, who was selected to the league’s all-defensive second team a couple of years ago, provides a massive upgrade on the side of the ball that was DeRozan’s weak spot. What cutthroat competitor wouldn’t be happy about that?

And as for Casey, with whom Lowry maintained a mercurial co-existence — it’s hard to imagine the point guard cried a tear when team president Masai Ujiri threw the NBA’s coach of the year over the side to make way for Nurse’s eventual promotion.

So in some ways it makes sense that Lowry operated the way he did Friday. Silence was a solid option if the goal was to show public solidarity with DeRozan. Given that DeRozan has repeatedly expressed his heartbrokenness with the trade, Lowry couldn’t have exactly endorsed the deal without appearing traitorous. But panning the trade, on the other hand, wouldn’t exactly make Lowry’s life easier, either. The presence of Gregg Popovich only abetted Lowry’s zipped-lip strategy. The Spurs honcho and U.S. national team head coach also insisted on keeping the conversation limited to USA Basketball matters, declining multiple requests to speak about DeRozan’s arrival in San Antonio. Suddenly Lowry wasn’t being difficult. He was following USA Basketball policy.

Certainly Nurse, if he has no doubts he’ll see Lowry playing with his usual bulldog spirit, acknowledged a concern with the team chemistry that may or may not exist when Leonard and Green enter the picture. Leonard is a quiet presence who’s known to be “practically mute” off the court, according to one Spurs insider who spoke to the Star’s Doug Smith recently. And while Nurse figures all will be well on the court with Leonard and Green — “They both guard. They both can make some shots. Who doesn’t to play with that?” — the dynamic of any given locker room can be difficult to foresee. Not that Nurse won’t be doing his best to ensure the Raptors reside in relative harmony during the most anticipated season in franchise history.

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“I’m constantly trying to build a little better chemistry, a little bit of this and that, here and there, to get ’em to play their best,” Nurse said Friday in Las Vegas. “Once it gets there, like it did with us the last three or four years, it’s there … Now it may not be there, but I think about it a lot.”

Precisely how Lowry sees such things figures to have considerable impact on the coming season. One day soon, maybe we’ll even get the privilege of hearing some of his thoughts.

Dave Feschuk is a Toronto-based sports columnist. Follow him on Twitter: @dfeschuk

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